Tag: motion graphics

The MFA students in my Advanced Motion Graphics class were tasked with creating a project that would act as thesis support. Because I was only in my first semester of my grad studies, I really wasn’t sure what I should do. I wanted to make something didactic, and considered doing some sort of data visualization, a user interface, and also just supplemental graphics, but decided on trying to animate some Crazy Global Warming Solutions from an Information is Beautiful data set.

I did three style tests of wind-powered kiteships:

This was a pretty straightforward assignment: Find a :30-2:00 clip of audio and animate type to match it in a style that compliments the content. One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day, and I chose to use one of my favorite scenes—Phil’s dire prediction for Rita.

Aside from laying out all the text in Illustrator first, all the work was done in After Effects, so I don’t have much in the way of process documentation. The typeface used is Proxima Soft, and Artbeats’ Frosty Window Tutorial helped me get the cold effect I wanted for the end.

I’m generally happy with how it turned out, but if I had time to do it over again, I would plan things out slightly better so that the movement wasn’t so frenetic, especially in the middle.

The brief for this project was called “Line Versus Type”, and asked us to choose a book and animate the title—exploring the interaction of lines and typography. I immediately thought of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and how I could use elements from the story to construct the title.

I chose a retro-futuristic sci-fi style to elicit a feeling of the game/battle simulation from the book. The typeface I ended up using was Anurati by Emmeran Richard, it perfectly fit the vibe I was going for.

Type exploration, scene design, and storyboarding was all done in Illustrator, then brought into After Effects and animated. Sound effects are all from freesound.org, and credited in the final video below.

Process: